NEW YORK (AP) — A second suspect in the stray-bullet killing of a 7-month-old baby on a Brooklyn street was arrested Friday, police said, two days after a shooting the police commissioner called “a tragedy that truly shocks the conscience.”
Matthew Rodriguez, 18, was apprehended in Pennsylvania by New York Police Department detectives working with U.S. Marshals, the NYPD said.
The suspected shooter, 21-year-old Amuri Greene, was arrested shortly after the drive-by gunfire that killed Kaori Patterson-Moore. Greene pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges at an arraignment Friday night and was held without bail.
Kaori was in her stroller when a two men sped down a street on a moped Wednesday afternoon. Greene, riding on the back of the vehicle, fired into a group of people on a street corner, according to a court complaint.
Kaori’s mother, Lianna Charles-Moore, told the New York Post that after hearing what she initially believed were fireworks, she was comforting her startled 2-year-old son — who had been grazed by a bullet — when she looked to her left and saw her baby daughter bleeding. The infant had been shot in the head.
“My daughter was innocent. She didn’t deserve that,” Charles-Moore told the newspaper. She said her daughter was just about starting to crawl and had recently begun saying “Mama.”
Greene told police he was aiming for another person in the crowd, according to the court complaint.
His attorney, Jay Schwitzman, said after court that he would conduct “an independent and thorough investigation of the facts and circumstances of this tragic incident.”
Police said that after the shooting, the moped sped and crashed into a car two blocks away, hurling both men off the vehicle. Greene was injured and soon was hospitalized in police custody, but the moped driver fled.
Authorities haven’t yet released court papers that detail Rodriguez’s alleged role. But they haven’t indicated they were looking for anyone other than the gunman — alleged to have been Greene — and the moped driver.
Police didn’t immediately have information on how the men may know each other or where Rodriguez lives; no working telephone number for him could immediately be found. Police charges against him were pending.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch expressed heartbreak and outrage over Kaori’s death.
“This is a terrible day in our city, a tragedy that truly shocks the conscience,” Tisch said at a news briefing Wednesday.
